


Smile More

by Intergalactic_Asher



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Afterlife, don't pay attention to the setting, or something like that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:35:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Intergalactic_Asher/pseuds/Intergalactic_Asher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The conversation they never got to have.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile More

**Author's Note:**

> Hamilton is basically my life now... This is set in some kind of vague afterlife-y scenario. I don't care much about the setting I just wanted these two to sit down and talk to each other for once.

“You pointed at the sky.” 

It’s the first thing either of them has said to each other in… Well, it was impossible to say how long. Burr shifts his weight uncomfortably. He hadn’t planned to speak first. Hamilton only nods.

“Why? You had your glasses on, I thought... “ It’s half question, half plea for understanding.

Hamilton shrugs. “It was a last-minute decision. I realized halfway through I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Burr nods slowly. Hamilton is as impulsive as ever, he supposes. 

“I shouldn’t have let it get that far,” Burr offers. “You were acting from your heart… You always do. I should have let it go.”

“I wouldn’t have let it go,” Hamilton says. He’s not looking at Burr. “I would have done the same as you did.”

Silence falls. Burr shifts again from foot to foot.

“I wasn’t kidding when I said I was running because of you,” he says. “You always went after what you wanted. I thought… I was trying to take a leaf out of your book. Too late I guess.” He steals a glance at Hamilton’s face.

“We both should have learned more from each other,” he adds quietly.

“I suppose I could have talked a bit less.”

“You could have smiled more, Alexander.”

Hamilton opens his mouth as if to retort, then closes it again. Burr realizes he may be witnessing the first time Hamilton has ever backed down.

He suddenly feels the need to explain himself. “You were always so relentless,” he says, the words seeming to spill out of him. Was this what Hamilton felt like when he was writing? “You never stopped or slowed down. I just keep thinking, maybe, if you had-”

“That would have kept you from shooting?” Hamilton’s voice is dry.

Burr hesitates. “Maybe not,” he admits. “It would have been better though. You could have enjoyed the time you had.”

Alexander looks thoughtful. “Slowing down. Doesn’t seem like quite my style,” he says.

“You have to start somewhere, right?” Burr says. Hamilton chuckles before letting silence fall again.

“Did you ever regret it?” Hamilton asks. “You never expressed any regret, but… You don’t express much. Did you regret shooting?” He looks… Small. It’s disconcerting.

“Knowing what I know now,” Burr says, weighing his words as always, “I wouldn’t have done it. If I could go back and do it over, I wouldn’t shoot.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Hamilton looks at Burr full-on for the first time. “Do you regret it?”

Burr hesitates. How can he say this? He searches for the right words.

“Dammit, Burr!” The old fire is back in Hamilton’s eyes. “Speak from your heart for once. Look where we are! If you can’t be honest with me here, where can you be?” He sounds angry, but there’s something underneath the anger, and it’s that something that brings the words out of Burr.

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t regret it. It was always going to happen. Either that or you would have killed me. I’m glad it didn’t end up that way. I don’t regret it.”

Hamilton actually takes a step back. Burr has never seen him look like this before. Shocked, maybe even scared.

“I didn’t shoot though,” he says, and it actually takes him a minute to find the words. “I aimed away from you. We both could have walked away.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Burr says. It’s easier now that he’s started. “It wouldn’t have mattered. We could have walked away best friends and sooner or later it would have happened. In the end, one of us would have killed the other one.”

“You can’t know that.”

Burr looks at his hands. “I do know. I always did, from the first time we met. When you said you punched the bursar at Princeton.” Burr almost laughs at the memory. Almost.

There’s silence between them. There has been too much silence between them in the past.

“I guess…. I wish I had given you more time. It would have happened sooner or later... I could have let it be later. I do regret that.”

Hamilton doesn’t say anything.

“We were bound together. I knew from the beginning that we were. I wish it hadn’t ended how it did… But I think that was the only way it could end.”

Still Hamilton is silent.

“I’m sorry, Alexander.”

Hamilton takes Burr’s hand. “I’m glad I know,” he says.

It’s burr’s turn to be silent. How is it Hamilton’s hand can feel so warm, in a place where warmth and touch don’t even really exist?

Hamilton is still talking. “I see what you mean. I always wondered how I would die. More than once I imagined it at your hands. There was always something right about that.”

Burr wonders if this is what forgiveness sounds like, coming from Hamilton. “Thank you,” he says.

“For what?”

“For letting me explain.”

Hamilton smiles, says nothing. His hand keeps holding Burr’s.

It’s not much in the way of reconciliation, but it’s enough.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to solikethesea for the amazing remix of this fic, [predestination (The "talk less" remix)](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5154551)! It's amazing, if you like this fic you should definitely read that one as well.
> 
> Thanks as well to macaroon22 for the [incredible fanart](http://macaroon22.tumblr.com/post/133689971831/ow-my-heart-hurts-i-was-browsing-the-hamilton#notes) they drew for this fic!
> 
> I'm so honored I helped inspire these things honestly I don't deserve this

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [predestination (the "talk less" remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5154551) by [solikethesea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/solikethesea/pseuds/solikethesea)




End file.
